An All-Conference USA cornerback at Houston, Hayden found himself lying on the operating table at Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital one day last November after a scary practice collision left him clinging to life.

Hayden had no idea the severity of the situation at the time, just that he was in unbearable pain with chills running down his body and couldn’t see out of his left eye.

As he sat answering questions for Houston trainer Mike O’Shea, Hayden started praying, “Lord, help me get out of this one.”

“They rushed me to the hospital and did a scan on my stomach and my chest,” Hayden recalled at the NFL combine in February. “They saw a lot of blood in my abdomen. They thought it was my liver or my spleen.

“The doctor said he was going to have to cut me open. I said, ‘OK, just don’t mess my abs up.’ So they cut through my sternum and saw the (inferior vena cava), the main vein to your heart, was torn. He put some sutures in, stitched it back together, closed me back up and here I am today.”

It was a little more frantic than that, of course, but Hayden is both a medical miracle and one of the top players in the NFL draft, a first-round talent who could be the second cornerback taken behind Alabama’s Dee Milliner if enough teams are comfortable with his medical reports.

Hayden, who lost almost 25 pounds after surgery and still has a huge scar running down his sternum, said doctors told him his injury was 95% fatal and one they usually see in high-speed car crashes.

As he lay in his hospital bed, struggling to sit up, Hayden said he watched a replay of the practice collision more than 100 times.

It was an underthrown pass, the Cougars were in a Cover 3 defense with no receiver nearby, and when one of his teammates jumped for the ball Hayden took a knee directly to the chest.

“The first couple days I was really depressed,” he said. “I thought I’d never play football again. But the doctor told me after three or four months I should be able to play again. I was like, ‘OK, I have hope.’ But there was always doubt in my mind. I was questioning myself, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ I even questioned God because I was in a whole different state of mind.”

At his pro day last month, Hayden was back in a familiar place.

He wowed scouts by running a 4.4-second 40-yard dash and cemented his status as one of the biggest playmakers in the draft.

In 22 games over two seasons at Houston, Hayden, who spent 2009-10 at Navarro junior college, had six interceptions and six forced fumbles.

“As horrific as that whole thing was, I think most of the teams have come to the conclusion that it was a once-in-a-gazillion situation that has no more chance of being replicated than it did in the first place,” NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock said in a teleconference last week. “I think there's some residual concern, like will he be the same player after a near-death type of collision? And that’s a legitimate question to ask.

“However, if you assume, and I think most teams are, that this kid is going to be who he was, then the next question was, well what did he run, because the tape is great. And he went out in his pro day before he pulled his hammy and ran in the 4.48 and the 4.42 range, depending who you talk to. The two big issues, I think, were speed and medical and I think they have both been erased.”

Hayden, who’s ranked as the No. 14 prospect and top cornerback in the draft by Mayock, said medicals aside teams shouldn’t have any concerns about him as a prospect.

“I have a whole new outlook on life,” he said. “All the stuff I took for granted, I don’t take for granted any more whether it’s family, friends, God — I’m cherishing every moment because you never know when your time is up.

“The way I’m looking at it is if you’re going to do something, do it to your fullest. If I’m going to play a game, I’m going to play my hardest the whole game. If that was my time to end, I don’t feel I finished like I finished my career the way I wanted to. I don’t feel like I played well in my last game. I just want another opportunity to play another game and do what I can do.”